The first stable release of the AlmaLinux distribution took place, created in response to the premature winding down of support for CentOS 8 by Red Hat (the release of updates for CentOS 8 was decided to stop at the end of 2021, and not in 2029, as users assumed). The project was founded by CloudLinux, which provided resources and developers, and was placed under the wing of a separate non-profit organization, the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, for development on a neutral platform with community participation. A million dollars a year have been allocated for the development of the project.
Builds are prepared for the x86_64 architecture in the form of a boot (650 MB), minimal (1.8 GB) and full image (9 GB). It is also planned to publish builds for the ARM architecture in the near future. The release is based on the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 and is completely identical to it in functionality, with the exception of changes associated with rebranding and the removal of RHEL-specific packages, such as redhat-*, insights-client and subscription-manager-migration*. All developments are published under free licenses.
The distribution develops in accordance with the principles of the classic CentOS, is formed through a rebuild of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 package base and retains full binary compatibility with RHEL, which allows it to be used as a transparent replacement for the classic CentOS 8. Updates for the AlmaLinux distribution branch based on the RHEL 8 package base , they promise to release until 2029. To migrate existing installations of CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux, just download and run a special script.
The distribution is free for all categories of users, developed with the involvement of the community and using a management model similar to the organization of the Fedora project. AlmaLinux is trying to find the optimal balance between corporate support and the interests of the community - on the one hand, the resources and developers of CloudLinux, which has extensive experience in supporting RHEL forks, are involved in the development, and on the other hand, the project is transparent and controlled by the community.
As alternatives to the old CentOS, in addition to AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux (test builds are promised to be published on March 31) and Oracle Linux (tied to the interests of the corporation) are also positioned. In addition, Red Hat has made RHEL available for free to open source organizations and individual developer environments with up to 16 virtual or physical systems.
Source: opennet.ru